University of Oxford

The aim of the MAMA XI project is to make available some 600 unpublished inscriptions and other ancient monuments, recorded by Sir William Calder (1881-1960) and Dr Michael Ballance (†27 July 2006) in the course of annual expeditions to Asia Minor in 1954-1957. The digitisation and web-publication of the archive is one of the most important and innovative aspects of the MAMA XI project. This website, developed by the project team, will eventually include full editions with comprehensive high-resolution photographic illustration of all the monuments in the Calder-Ballance archive.

Ancient towns were filled with life-size bronze and marble figures – by the third century important cities of the empire could have over a thousand such statues. The habit of erecting statues in public to rulers, and to other dignitaries and benefactors, was a defining characteristic of the ancient world. The dedication of statues expressed the relationship between rulers and ruled and articulated the benefaction-and-honour system of city politics. Statues also played a significant role in defining civic identity, and in forming and perpetuating a city’s collective memory.

This project has investigated the manuscripts of all literary works by five major Middle English writers (the manuscripts dating 1375-1600), Geoffrey Chaucer, Thomas Hoccleve, William Langland, John Gower and John Trevisa, to find relationships among the writers and their patrons and audiences through the identification of the scribes who wrote the manuscripts. We will have examined over 300 manuscripts in libraries worldwide, and analyzed the number of hands in each manuscript and the other manuscripts written by these hands.

The Lexicon of Greek Personal Names is a project to collect and publish all ancient Greek personal names from the 8th Century BC to the late Roman Empire. Please see the full project description on http://www.arts-humanities.net/projects/lexicon_greek_personal_names